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Shortages! Is The World Really Running Out Of Food, Water And Oil?

By Michael Snyder, on February 17th, 2011

Everywhere you look today the mainstream news is talking about shortages. Authorities all over the globe are boldly proclaiming that the world is rapidly running out of food, water and oil. So are these doomsayers right? Well, it must be noted that some of the most famous “prophets of doom” of the past several decades have seen their predictions fail spectacularly. For example, in his infamous 1968 book entitled “The Population Bomb“, Paul Ehrlich made the following statement: “I don’t see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” Well, India is now feeding well over twice the number of people than they had when Ehrlich originally wrote his book. But that doesn’t mean that major shortages won’t happen in the future. It just means that we should be careful not to look incredibly ridiculous like Ehrlich did. The truth is that there are good reasons why we should be watching global supplies of food, water and oil very closely. Life as we know it would cease to exist if we had severe shortages of any of them.

So will we actually be facing serious shortages of food, water or oil in the coming years?

Well, let’s take a look at oil first.

Oil Shortage?

Right now oil is absolutely essential to almost everything that we do. We require oil to drive our cars, we require oil to produce our food, a large percentage of our homes use energy that is derived from oil and most of what we buy at the stores comes in packaging that is made up at least partly of oil.

So if we run out of oil that is going to be a really huge deal.

So are we going to run out of oil?

Well, right now advocates of the “peak oil” hypothesis are getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media.

Basically the idea behind “peak oil” is that the world has reached (or almost reached) the maximum amount of oil that it can produce and that from here on out the amount of oil that will be produced will begin to decline. Meanwhile, the demand for oil is only going to continue to increase.

So is there evidence that this is actually happening?

Well, it depends on who you ask. But what is undeniable is that there are some very powerful interests that are doing their best to hype a coming oil shortage.

In recently released report entitled “Signals & Signposts“, Shell Oil warns that global demand for energy is going to be three times as large in 2050 as it was in 2000.

So where will all of that extra energy come from?

Can the world possibly produce two or three times as much oil as it does today?

The Shell Oil report forecasts that the global supply of oil will continue to rise but that the rise in supply will not be fast enough to keep up with the rise in demand. According to Shell, this is going to cause rapidly rising oil prices which will cause the gross domestic products of all nations to fall.

So just how high could oil prices go?

Well, the truth is that the price of oil is very highly manipulated. The market for oil is not exactly what you would call a “free market”.

However, it is alarming that almost everyone is forecasting much higher oil prices at this point.

For example, Weeden & Co. oil analyst Charles Maxwell recently stated that he believes that the price of oil will eventually hit $300 a barrel by the end of this decade.

If that were to happen, it would be absolutely disastrous for the global economy. Yeah, those in the oil industry would make a killing, but for the rest of the world it would be a complete and utter nightmare.

Unfortunately, what most Americans don’t understand is that there are lots of alternative energy technologies out there that have been repressed by the big oil companies and by the big oil producing nations because they threaten hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.

For example, did you know that it is possible to run a car entirely on water? One Japanese company hopes to start mass marketing them….

But I wouldn’t count on seeing water-powered cars sold on every street corner any time soon.

Why?

Because of greed.

Our entire system of energy is based on making as much money as possible for those who have all the oil.

So if the world has a shortage of energy in the coming years, it is not because that is how it inevitably had to be.

Rather, it will be all about pure, unadulterated greed.

There are plenty of alternative energy technologies out there that are incredibly promising, but those that are getting incredibly wealthy off of our oil-based society are not going to quietly step aside for the good of mankind.

Food Shortage?

So what about food?

Is the world running out of food?

Well, as we have seen so many times in the past, the earth can support far more people than most of the “experts” ever imagined.

In fact, if weather patterns were perfectly stable and we removed human greed out of the picture, the earth could most likely support a whole lot more people.

In particular, this year extreme weather all over the globe is causing many to be concerned that we may soon see some very serious food shortages. In Australia and Brazil, flooding of Biblical proportions has absolutely devastated crops. Some of China’s most important agricultural areas are experiencing the worst droughts that they have seen in 200 years. Authorities are warning that two-thirds of China’s wheat crop could be in danger. A recent cold snap that hit northern Mexico wiped out entire harvests and has sent prices for many fresh produce items in the United States soaring.

But these bizarre weather patterns will hopefully settle down eventually.

What is of even greater concern is that we have been seeing a long-term trend of rapidly rising food prices over the last couple of years that is putting an extreme amount of strain on the 3 billion people in the world that are trying to survive on the equivalent of 2 dollars or less per day.

Most Americans can still handle rising food prices, but for millions upon millions of poor people all over the world a significant increase in the cost of food can mean the difference between life and death.

That is why the sudden rise in price of so many agricultural commodities is so disturbing. Just consider some of the shocking price increases that we have seen over the past year or two….

*But there are few places where the water shortage is as severe as it is in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia had been producing enough wheat to be self-sufficient for most of the past 30 years, but in 2008 authorities there realized that the non-replenishable aquifer they had been pumping for irrigation purposes was nearly depleted. So in response Saudi Arabia made the decision to reduce their wheat harvest by one-eighth every year thereafter. Wheat production in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to cease entirely in 2016.

In some of the most populated areas of the planet the water situation can only be described as catastrophic.

For example, did you know that a new desert the size of Rhode Island is created in China because of drought every single year?

Did you know that in China 80% of the major rivers are so polluted that they don’t support aquatic life at all?

Did you know that the women of South Africa collectively walk the equivalent distance to the moon and back 16 times a day for water?

Thankfully the water situation in the United States has not gotten that bad yet, but the truth is that even we could be facing serious water shortages in the years ahead.

According to a recent report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than one-third of all counties in the lower 48 states will likely be facing very serious water shortages by the year 2050.

So, yes, there are some really good reasons to be concerned about earth’s dwindling resources.

If the global elite were not so incredibly greedy and if we managed our planet better we would not have problems to this degree.

But here we are.

So what is the solution?

Well, it would be really great if the global elite would just share some of their wealth. A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.

But the global elite aren’t about to change the rules of the global economy. After all, they spent a whole lot of time and effort rigging the game so that virtually all wealth eventually gets funneled into their hands.

After all, they argue, if there are half as many people around then we will only be using half as many resources, right?

Well, as alluring as that may sound, the truth is that the world has always had a huge problem with poverty. Even when the global population was down around 100 million people there was rampant poverty.

The number of people is not the problem.

The problem is the insatiable greed of the elite.

The global elite have systematically exploited the poor all over the planet, they have gobbled up the resources of the world wherever they have found them and now they are hoarding their wealth as millions upon millions suffer desperately.

Well, in the end the global elite will have to answer to a higher power. In the book of James it talks about those who hoard wealth on this earth….

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

According to the most recent “Global Wealth Report” by Credit Suisse, the wealthiest 0.5% control over 35% of the wealth of the world.

That qualifies as hoarding wealth.

Other estimates put the concentration of wealth at the very top of the food chain much higher than that.

But sadly, the problem of greed is not going to be solved any time soon.

Global supplies of food and fresh water are going to continue to diminish.

The world economy is going to continue to become increasingly unstable.

If it was always your desire to live in “interesting times”, then you are about to get your wish. Things are about to get extremely “interesting” on this planet.

So what do you think? Do you believe that the world will be facing shortages of food, water and oil in the years ahead? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

What is it in that the global elite keep their wealth in? Electronic tabulation? Paper?

Maria

Well done E.C.B.!

Now let me get this straight…

Most among the global elite seem to believe that radical population control is the answer.

So lets see…

If the wealthiest 0.5% control over 35% of
the wealth of the world, and the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth…

Then it appears the ELITE are correct…eliminating just the top .5% of the population would solve EVERYONE else’s problems.

Brilliant idea global elite!

Maria

How is that for sarcasm?

Global elite, I suggest you come up with a better solution than population control.

Just sayin.

Polente

Where is the human ingenuity for building desalinization plants close to coastal areas?

Suetonious

This is a very dangerous period, because of previous successes in ramping up the food supply to just barely match exploding populations.

It reminds me of a story about a region out West, where local bleeeding hearts thought that cougars or coyotes killing and eating deer constituted cruel and unusual punishment. So, thinking swiftly, they put a bounty on the predators and drastically reduced their numbers. As a consequence, the deer overpopulated and they ALL underwent very miserable deaths. Duhhh.

So, here we are in a similar situation that requires bounty harvests on a consistent basis to avoid starvation somewhere. But it’s not just about a challenge in maintaining record harvests. Due to a nearly global practice of JIT (Just In Time delivery), any major interruption in deliveries caused by anything from earthquakes to volcanoes to man-made conflicts, and even by ethereal factors such as the lack of credit, pretty much guarantees mass-starvation. And this time, it won’t necessarily be in the faraway places that barely reach the news – but right smack dab in the First World as well.

Alice

When you have half the world’s population in China and India alone, developing and becoming consumers, what do you expect! Demand for everything, will create shortages for everything! I think the Methane gas alone they’ll create, will be the only thing in abundance left on earth!

I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, don’t know how to cook or clean, don’t want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women?

American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least.

This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women.

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN!

http://endtimeinfo.com Doe

Even if there is no water shortage in every country, it is an important point on the Bilderberg agenda to control whatever there is. In my country ALL the water companies were sold to big corporations. They can charge people whatever they want or withhold it at will.
In the US people don’t even have the right to collect and use rain water without registering a water right first.
This is good read:How Banks and Investors are Starving the Third World

Dan McDonald

I am not sure how much these shortages are long term shortages or more like short term responses to the rapid increase of money supplies throughout the globe. Yes, there have been weather spawned disasters. But how often in times of high inflation caused by increases in money supply do we hear of every reason for price increases except the obvious fact that governments are printing tons of money chasing the same number of goods. Increased money supply leads to shortages, higher prices, and all sorts of excuses for the shortages other than a freaking large amount of money supply interfering with normal market operations.

Jason

“But I wouldn’t count on seeing water-powered cars sold on every street corner any time soon.
Why?
Because of greed.”

Not because of greed, but because of the laws
of physics. Did you notice in the clip that
they did not divulge the principle of how the
car generated its own energy. This is a scam to get gullible investers.

I disagree that peak oil is a hypothesis. According to the The International Energy Agency the peak of conventional oil production was, in fact, in 2006. In other words we now have to increasingly use oil that
is far more hard to get at. For a full
explanation see: http://www.postpeakliving.com

Food shortages: Oil is intimately used in the
production of food: Tractors and transportation. Natural gas which is mined using oil is used to make fertilizer. So when
oil goes into a sharp decline so will food.

water: This may or may not be a problem. It depends on how U look at it. water can be made
using rain-water harvesting or by desalination
plants. The latter is quite energy intensive.

All in all I think we will reach peak oil and peak food sometime very soon and peak water a lot later.

http://www.reasonandjest.com/blog Scott Lazarowitz

Why the food shortages? Have you seen Barney Frank lately? There’s your answer.

Why the water shortages? I’m sure Al Gore has a solution. Let’s form a commission to study the matter.

It really is because of the elitists’ use of the coercive powers of the State.

Perhaps we can engage in the same kind of civil disobedience as the Egyptians, and ignore the State’s rules regarding oil, water and food.

Without the forced dictations of the State, I’m sure that private, free individuals and groups can more easily create viable solutions to these problems.

Josey Wales

Just a suggestion, why don’t you do a story on the number of Big retail stores filing for bankruptcy in the last 24 months and the effect on commericial realestate and local economies that depended on these mega giants for jobs. Borders is gone now and Ulitimate Electronics is gone just in 2011. God only knows how many other big chain stores have filled for bankruptcy since this began in 2001-2008 to today. I remember when I was growing up all I heard about was monopoly’s in business. There were saftey measures in place to keep monopoly’s from even happening, now it seems every business is a monopoly, from agriculture to Banking to oil and gas. Hell, even telephone company’s. How can small business exist if the monopoly’s of the global elite keep growing? And how can people like you and I slow them down?

Awesome article today by the way. You guys are the best. You write about things that most people never think about. Keep up the good work.

JpMorgan ready to …

I respect your work, but what you’re doing is scaring people .. The worst thing is that fear creates wars.

JP Morgan will pull the price of gold and silver on the floor . .. and people are going to lose money

TruckerMark

In 1975 my dad’s company (a large worldwide industrial firm with over 100K employees) evaluated the known oil reserves at that time, and the current use and forecast consumption trends, and they came-up with a figure that said that the Earth had between 100 and 150 years worth of economically-recoverable oil reserves left before supply began to become a problem.

Since 1975 there have been a number of large new oil discoveries, and at the same time, consumption worldwide has quadrupled, (which has grossly exceeded the 1975 predictions), which now only leaves us 40-60 years worth of economically-recoverable oil left. In 40 years if I am still around I will be 94, and I doubt that I will be doing much driving at that age. For the rest of you, I might suggest trying to buy cars that get a little better gas mileage. Today in Great Britain you can buy a Ford Focus that gets 60 MPG, so why not here?

According to current population growth trends the US population will be between 400 and 450 million by 2050, and world population will be approaching 9 billion people, if there are enough reserves of fresh water to support that many people. Most of the growth in world population will be in the 3rd world, much of that in Africa. Today Lagos, Nigeria is growing in population at an annual average of 6-7%, and currently has an urban population of 17 million, which means that in 15-20 years, Lagos will be one of the world’s largest cities, far larger than New York City. Already, Lagos and much of West Africa is experiencing food and water shortages, with huge areas of former crop land already desertified and the local water table declining precipitously. Look at what has happened to Lake Chad and a number of other large bodies of water that have been used-up recently trying to grow crops. Lake Chad, once as large as Lake Ontario in surface area, is now down by 90% in size from 40 years ago due to the effects of ever increasing amounts of agricultural irrigation, the encroaching Sahara Desert, and global warming in that region.

At last Fall’s global climate change conference in Cancun, the published consensus opinion was that the world is looking at sea level rising by 1.5 to 5 meters, or about 5 to 17 feet, by 2050, which will mean that half of the State of Florida and much of southern Louisiana will be underwater by then, along with many other oceanfront and low-lying areas both here at home and all over the world too. For instance, more than half of Dutch farmland would be inundated by a sea-level rise of 10 feet, along with other large productive agricultural regions too. A lot of Manhattan, Baltimore, and Boston would be underwater if the predicted worst-case scenario occurs too.

Clearly there are a number of critical issues facing the human race over the next 20-50 years, and we could very well see a virtual end to the availability of oil, mass starvation, a huge rise in sea levels and mass population displacement, and an absolute crisis in drinking water supplies in our lifetimes, to go along with a continuing trend toward the greediest among us taking more and more of the available money supply. So my advice is to begin stocking-up on critical supplies now, and maybe take a long hard look at that prime oceanfront real estate that you have always wanted too, as maybe some northern rural real estate where you can grow crops or raise livestock will be a much better bet in the long-term.

http://occultrick.wordpress.com Rick

A very complex system is a very fragile system.

Social systems of coercion tend to undermine the societies on which they depend. Rome was an excellent system for compelling obedience and reducing free men to slaves.

But Rome fell. Eventually.

Slavery gets bad. Slavery doesn’t last forever.

TK

This is history in the making.

Never in the world’s history have so many problems arose at the same time. Never in the past 6 thousand years have we had the ability to know what is going on across the globe in a matter of seconds. These are truly exciting times that we live in.

It is no surprise that we are running out of food, oil, and water. When there are wicked people in charge, and their #1 priority is self, the poor are left to suffer.

May God have mercy on the rich in today’s world. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God. They love their money more than their creator.

Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Thank you for another great post showing that we are truly in the last days.

Steven P. Cornett

Another insight into the responsibilities of the rich to justice to the poor, as well as those of the poor, is given by St. Basil. He wrote this during the 4th Century, when Rome was collapsing into a similar type of caste system as we see forming in the West now.

He saw the proper place of wealth in salvation history as a call to proper stewardship, and the reward to the poor for patience. In this context, the withholding of that wealth by denying others the goods of the earth with is God’s gift to all is nothing less than plundering and theft.

OIL
The standard of living in the developed countries will drop as oil is used for necessities. Oil will be significantly displaced with Natural Gas and coal based liquid motor fuel. The coal based fuel inflation aside could be produced for far less then $300 / BBL USD.

FOOD
The immigrants to the US pre WW2 all had gardens. Their offspring two generations later compete for the golf green lawn award. My Great Uncle fed himself and his wife damn vear exclusively on his garden and chicken coop in a small town on a 1/4 acre lot buying almost nothing. He had organic down long before the term was known. He used to say, “You no grow if you no eat”. McMansion will become McFarm because necessity is the motherhood of both invention and creativity.

http://food stingray

bible already told

http://www.fortapopka.com Mike

While there is definitely some merit to the idea that the ultra wealthy are hoarding I’m not sure that matters too much when it comes to oil, water and food. Real shortages exists when there is not enough of the commodity to go around not when there is not enough money to buy what exists. Even if the wealthy give away nearly all of their money more water is not just going to appear.

If greed is preventing alternative energy ideas to come to market then that is something that can be fixed. If greed is keeping farmers from growing more food to keep prices high then that too can be fixed.

It’s going to take technology and resolve to fix the true shortages going forward. A bit more charity and real interest in helping each other will go a long way too.

Gabe

Speculation and further speculation is driving the price of everything up. The gold price have been sky rocketing and there is no real physical demand. So, are your hyper-marts running out of food?

Water powered car featured is likely a fraud. It has to use some kind chemical reactant that frees hydrogen from the water. Thermal dynamics won’t let you get something for free. I do agree that oil prices are manipulated however, but I do think that we’re reaching the zenith of production.

Michael2

No, the world is not in the mist of overwhelming shortages, especially evil!

What is going on is most of the world’s wealth, oil, and timber; increasingly water, diamonds, gold, etc. are all concentrated in the hands of a few “people”.

What is really going on is humanity is being manipulated into a state of panic. The whole peak oil thing, global warming—cooling, whatever, the population boom theory, most of the nations in the world being conveniently in debt, the Mayan end time’s prophecy, the drug war, terrorism, much of which is self inflicted, global pandemics and all the rest of it we are supposed to be, soooo, afraid of. Every thing is all about being so afraid and letting them take control of every aspect of existence. Like any thing government and corporations are doing is leaving humanity in a better condition. What a massive load of bull shit, in my humble opinion of course.

For an example, all one has to do is look into O’Bushma’s, I mean Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John P. Holdren’s belief system and one will see one more voice among many in “elite circles” with the chicken little, the sky is falling syndrome.

If banks and their proxies and a handful of individuals and crime families did not control most of the wealth and people in each country were allowed to control their natural resources there would be a lot less need in the world. As far as I am concerned humanity is under going one of the greatest mind f*cks in our history. In my humble opinion we are being herded into some type of global control, corporate–oligarchic, fascist, technocrat, George Orwell’s 1984 type of existence. And always the prime movers of the herd are repeated incidents which humanity is supposed to be terribly afraid. As far as I am concerned they can bury me upside down so they kiss my ass on my out of this dreadful thing we existence because I am not afraid.

In my humble opinion, humanity has insane, power drunk “people” at the helm of human destiny right now, some call them the Old World Order. I call them bat shit crazy and evil. If anything it looks like they should be terrified more than us because the rage building in an increasingly global back lash looks like every thing they are building is crashing down with a thud that will echo in history for centuries to come.

Humanity demands freedom, in the end that passion will pierce through all illusions and the people behind the curtain/computer screens will be brought out from their secrecy and face justice the likes of which will pale the American and French Revolutions combined. As always this is in my humble opinion of course.

http://moneyedpoliticians.net Jack E Lohman

No, we will not run out of all these things, but the public will be made to think we are so the Fat Cat CEOs can increase the prices of their products, and incidentally, share some of the profits with the politicians that allowed it all to happen. Only public funding of campaigns will fix it.

Yes I do. I fear for the world that we are leaving our children and grandchildren. Hopefully, collectively, we may get it right someday (soon!) I am currently reading a book from another poster to this blog. I highly recommend it–by Cam Mather titled “Thriving during challenging times”. I always make Green goals every year; things to implement to make sustainable living a practice in our home. This read has so much wisdom!

Michael2

p.s. Haiti for example, every few yrs. millions of dollars pour into Haiti yet no discernable progress is ever made. Rather it’s from an earth quake or political upheaval the turmoil seems to never end. How can that be? Where is the money going? How can that many people be homeless in their own country? Why is the countries infrastructure in permanent disarray? Why is the government incompetent? And it seems no matter what charity allegedly goes Haiti’s way, the conditions of the people seem more and more deplorable and suffering seems never to end. Let me guess it’s just that Black people are inferior.

Yet this scenario is going on in country after country around the world and increasingly taking hold in countries, like America and certain European countries, where once these conditions were unheard of.

All by coincidence I am sure!!!

JPmorgan and Gold ,silver

JpMorgan Iis preparing a “sell-off” in the gold market in the next 2 months to retain the price even lower .. And people are buying …hahaha..Keep going …

http://www.povertylinejournal.blogspot.com/ the optimist

On a personal level, people need to do what they can to produce their own food and harvest rainwater (and build graywater systems to reclaim water). Even a city rooftop garden or suburban plot can be maximized to supplement dependence on the corporate food supply — and it will be fresher and healthier. Those who have land — even a single acre — should think about extending their hobby gardens into true sustainable farming operations, as in raising wheat and grains for personal use. Get rid of the lawn, that’s a complete waste of space and resources! Networking with neighbors to share/trade harvests is going to be essential. AND it will build community.

mark

Water is the big issue facing food production in the future. Ground water aquifers are dropping in china, india, and in the united states. The oqallala aquifer is droppig in the US.The government has cut off surface water to some of the best farm area in California over the delta smelt. It is more than just greed that will cause food shortages in the future. Either the elites are nuts or greedy to turn the world into one big park for their enjoyment while a lot of the world starves.

JD

Well, even if rich people have all the money its not like they are eating up all the food, using up all the oil or drinking up all the water. Middle class and poor are doing that, so obviously you can’t spend money to reduce the demand for water or buy water that doesn’t exist so I think consumption does have a factor to a degree.

Charles

I dont dispute the greed factor with Big energy. I do however dispute the notion that it is all greed. As a disiple of JH Kunster, I point out Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) keeps many of these wonder products off the market. Go do the EROEI math on solar, tar sands, wave technology, making desiel out of coal and othe methods of harnessing fairy dust. We are slow to adapt. Case in pointHybrid car technology has been around for 15 years. Now go out to your parking lot and depending where you live you will only count 3-10% of the cars are Hybrid. Doom on.

mondobeyondo

The name of the game is CONTROL. The elite want to control the masses, first and foremost. They already have much of the Third World under their control. We’re next.

Get control of the food, water and oil, and other natural resources, and they’ve got you under their thumb. The profits will follow later. Don’t you think that if they really wanted to, some of the wealthy could build a water pipeline from, say, the Persian Gulf to sub-Saharan Africa? With desalination plants to remove the salt, and all the necessary engineering? Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett could team up on this project! Millions of starving people could have water to grow crops and to use for themselves. Far fewer famines in Ethiopia and Sudan. But noooo…

A similar project was done in Alaska back in the 1970’s, so it can certainly be done. It’s called the Alaska Pipeline, and it transports oil from Prudhoe Bay to ships in the Gulf of Alaska. OIL. Oil is profitable, so in the view of Big Oil, the pipeline is justified. Water, not so much. So it will never happen. It’s not even their intent. Besides, they’ve got control of the gold and diamonds in Africa anyway. In the view of the elite, those “useless eaters” can starve for all they care.

One of the easiest ways to control is to go after what you’ve got. In the Third World, it’s land, water and resources. For most Americans, it’s a house and a bank account. Either way, once they have it – through legal means, foreclosure or just outright stealing what’s yours – they’ve got you where they want you.

http://thecivillibertarian.blogspot.com/ Frankenstein Government

People are running out of money- the capacity to take care of the essentials. The worldwide banking cartel cannot get enough money- so what if a few people die?

That’s how it is- when the cartel runs the world.

Ron Paul was right all along.

Fewer people means fewer problems. It is undeniable that population growth destroys the environment and exacerbates unemployment. The planet can only sustain so many people in a renewable manner.

Kevin

the optimist

Your right about the home gardens and sense of community.

Sal

Peak Oil: Does not mean we will run out; what it means is Oil will become increasingly more expensive (Trend).

Recently developed drilling techniques (since Peak Oil was written) are having a material impact on “rediscovering” oil in fields that were previously abandoned.

I’d me more worried about the $250b of dollars we export each year to buy foreign oil. If we go into an economic collapse and/or depression, the US may be forced to use some other medium other than USD$ to buy oil. If the US is short ‘hard currency’ for oil imports we’d be in one hell of a bad situation.

Italy, in particular, has been shifting cars over to Nat Gas (CNG). The US has tons of Nat Gas. Dual fuel nat-gas/gasoline cars are sold outside the US. I’d like to get one for exactly the scenario described above.

David

We are running out of time and out of everything soon. Why? That my friend, is the right question!

Charles Grey

Did you ever read the Georgia Guidestones? Especially the first part. Controlling food may how they start reducing populations.

Freeman

It reminds me of a story about a region out West, where local bleeeding hearts thought that Wolves would be magically animals drink from pollute streams and clean the water magically make everything right in the world. Those easy to fool gullible people never understood the real goal was to wipe out 90% of the elk to close down hunting. To put 30,000 ranchers out of work so we have to import beef from around the world doesn’t China Beef sound so good. Yes if you don’t believe me check the documented fact of Idaho Lolo hunting zone 20,000 elk before the idiot liberals brought in the wolves down to 1700 elk today. Kind of hard to feed your family in hard times when your food supply is being wipe out by a fake endangered species called the wolf.

Mark Plus

I don’t know why people obsess over the “control” certain elites supposedly have, considering that their power deals with relatively superficial things. The richest man in the world can order some people around and can reconfigure some of our world’s wealth and natural resources to his liking. But if he slips on an icy sidewalk and hits his head in a certain way, he’ll die just like a homeless person who slips on that same patch of ice.

And even billionaires like Steve Jobs can’t beat cancer, no matter how much money they spend on their health care.

Instead of blowing up these elites into supervillains you can blame for your loser lives, how about learning better habits so you can turn your lives around?

sharonsj

Could you also factor in the crazy Christians who are trying to ban abortions and force women–even rape and incest victims–to give birth? If you want to see the results of high birth rates, look at the Muslim countries (where a woman and a donkey have the same value); most of them are very poor, uneducated, and are a millennium behind the times.

One of the big oil companies just stated we’ve reached peak oil. Congress has done nothing about the energy problem for decades, and they’re not going to start now. Then you’ve got the conservatives who say global warming is a hoax–except that global warming is the reason we are having extreme weather and all those shortages. Better stock up while you can.

Tatiana Covington

There is no, and can be no, shortage of water on a planet 7/10 covered with water to an average depth of some 12,000 feet. As for the salt: the answer is simple: desalination and atomic power. We have enough thorium to be bred into uranium to last us about a billion years.

In fact, there are no shortages of anything. Consider: we live near a star which blasts out 4 million tons of light every second. Yes, it really is on that scale.

Finally, always recall something which I knew when I was 11, 53 years ago: atoms don’t wear out.

mondobeyondo

Oil is a finite resource. There is only so much of it in the world, and no more of it is being created, as far as we know. Could be wrong about that, but I doubt it.

Same with water. There’s more than enough water for everyone on Earth, and Mars, and the moon too. Just have to take all that salt out of it first.

Food…our esteemed and glorious scientists are always coming up with new means to bring further yields from crops. Grow more with less. Animals are being bred to produce more meat. Genetic engineering will feed all of mankind! (yeah. uh-huh.)

Remember that the next time you take your son/daughter fishing, and you hook a Frankentrout or something resembling a fish.

mondobeyondo

A replay of the “Dirty Thirties” are just around the corner.

1934 will seem like a Girl Scout picnic compared to where we’re headed. You will be happy to have bread. Stale bread, moldy bread, doesn’t matter. It’s bread, and it fills your stomach.

That is where we are headed.

steve sikora

Such pessimism. We live better lives than people even a hundred years ago. Sure amall disruptions can happen, but we are still better off. If there is an honest United States somewhere better technology will be available and all that is necessary is to implement it.
The key infrastructure in the USA is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that compels people to do what is right – deal honestly, tell the truth, don’t steal, pay the bills, don’t take more than what is fair, look to the long term, save, work as community, and be good to children. As a small businessman I know that business is impossible if people don’t pay or if theft is constant. Either Christ or tyrany can make an economy run right. One is infinitely better.
“Pure greed” sounds like a bad thing but if the rules are set right [read Capitalism] and an even minor number of people are transformed by Jesus Christ the society can prosper.

Auntiegrav

The rich get richer BECAUSE WE BUY THEIR STUFF AND WORK FOR THEM!!

They hoard money because we let them.

Concerned Reader

A hundred years from fututre historians will look back upon the twentieth century as one with numerous Malthusian catastrophies. Just as the advent of the age of oil in the mid-1800s helped propell the world’s population to nearly seven billion, so will its scarcity bring it back down. These Malthusian catastrophes will be compunded by trmendous wars and civil unrest brought about by the scacity of food, water, oil and living space. It is going to be a hell of a century!

One thing that the author missed about the food scarcity is not so much the food produced on land but what can be found in the sea. Humans are literally overfishing the seas to the point that large dead zones are popping up all over the world. I have read that just the bait alone that fishermen use to catch fish is enough to feed a small nation. To add insult to injury, we are upsetting the balance of the oceans by killing off thousands of sharks via finning. To piss off any creationists on this forum, life began with the sea and it will only end when all sea life is destroyed.

The religous right is giving republicans the power to end the middle class. They want us poor and desparate to give all power to churches. Say goodbye to freedom. Republicans want goverment control on everything. Marriage, abortions, medical marajuana, you name it. Republicans want the goverment in charge!

Zoltanne

Considering the number of unaffected “protesters” brought into Wisconsin for this union-related issue makes many of the viewers realize just how wrong this scenario is.

Knowing Obama’s own campaign organization and the DNC are involved with this WI outburst is not surprising, but wouldn’t this be collusion for attempting to defraud the government?

Kevin

Impeach

Damn you Josef Gobles?

Just a reminder for the 50th time. Eighty percent of US Senate Democrats voted for China Free trade which destroyed the middle class and a Democrat President signed it into law. A Democrat President literally twisted Democrat Congressman’s arms to vote for NAFTA and once on his desk he signed it into law. A Democrat President abolished the regulation s in Glass-Stegall and doing so created the unregulated conditions on Wall Street for the crash.

Generally the mainstream Republicans supported the same stuff.

Ron Paul voted against NAFTA and China Free Trade and supports medical marajuana and is a Physician.

You should consider new friends.

Mark Plus

@Auntiegrav:

“The rich get richer BECAUSE WE BUY THEIR STUFF AND WORK FOR THEM!!”

In other words, we created this outcome through voluntary behavior, not become some spooky elite “controls” everything.

Kevin

Mark Plus

Did WE push for NAFTA and China Free Trade that decimated Us manufacturing? Did the masses in Europe rally and petition their political leadership and say, ” I want you to abolish the tariffs with virtual slave labor nations so I can compete with them”.

That spooky elite just controls the important stuff like money and trade. They leave the rest alone to maintain the illusion of democratic rule. Make no mistake it is an illusion everywhere.

http://www.danielrevelationbiblestudies.com Robert Stout

Clean water, food storages and oil will create mass rioting around the world very soon!!! Here is a scenario that is coming very soon to this Earth: Remember first, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die in our place and second, God’s patience with defiance and rebellion is limited. During the coming Great Tribulation, the people of Earth will see God’s perfect balance between justice and mercy. Remember this balance as you consider about the soon coming Great Tribulation. The Great Tribulation will begin suddenly. It will begin with a global earthquake that effectively disrupts the activities of the whole world. (Revelation 8:5) God has a few things to say to the human race, and He intends to arrest the attention of the world with a massive earthquake that literally stops everything and everyone in their tracks. The sudden cessation of life as we know it will force everyone to stop and wonder what is going on. The coming earthquake is particularly interesting because geologists theorized a “global earthquake was physically impossible until the early 1990’s. Now physical evidence is proving that Earth’s tectonic plates go much deeper into the core of the Earth than previously thought, and this information has caused Geo-scientists to change their thinking. The book of Revelation predicts there will be a total of four global earthquakes. (Revelation 8:5, 11:13; 11:19; 16:18) These earthquakes will increasingly rip up the surface of the world, and the infrastructures of travel, communication and manufacturing will collapse during the Great Tribulation. These earthquakes have no equal in recorded history. Each earthquake will have greater strength than the one before it. The final earthquake will be so violent that it will literally move all the mountains and islands from their places. (Revelation 16:20; 6:14) Friends, these things are coming because we have all turned our back on God and not given Him the proper honor and glory that He deserves continually, because He is forever praised!!! We have less than 1% of clean water left in the world, and our food reserves are at the lowest in recorded history. Wake up before its too late!!! We cannot feed almost 7 billion people – please, just think about these serious things!!

Jonny Canuck

Recently Al Gore did all these world speaking tours screaming the ‘Chicken little thing’.
“The earth is warming, The Earth is warming”.
And now I just watched the moviehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79ZH3MRbkJc
Spraywars – What in the world are they spraying?
Two of those chemicals, Aluminum and Barium cause heating – not cooling as is being claimed. Wiki says the reaction of Barium and Oxygen is exothermic – it heats up!
This has been done since the 90’s. Interestingly there is a correlation to the major increases in global warming that have been observed recently.
Coincidence?
Jesse Ventura has a nice article on HAARP. that uses the ionosphere as a backgrounder for a major weapon, to control weather. Gee anyone noticed a change in weather lately? Why yes matter of fact Al Gore pointed it out just a few years ago. Although it may look like a full circle it is far from complete.
Now I hear Jesse Ventura telling us that the elite are draining the great lakes, bottling it and storing it somewhere overseas.
.
I agree with Marie.
Population reduction may be what is required. Removing the top 5% will solve most of the worlds problems. Seems to me some frenchmen did that in the late 1700’s
I would not want to be a hoarder of goods in todays society. It is not a good place to be.

mondobeyondo

“The rich get richer BECAUSE WE BUY THEIR STUFF AND WORK FOR THEM!!”

Yes, they do. Most of us really don’t have a choice. Buy American? Sure, you bet! Just find something that is TRULY 100% “Made in America”, and not a product of some conglomerate of electronics, gears, yarn, etc. that wasn’t made in India, or Bangladesh, or Nigeria…Mexico..the Philippines.. Thailand…

http://ain'tgotnone ehswan

Regarding shortages.
I’ve flown over this country (USA) several times and noted that we have left no room for anything that does not profit us.
Biologists have noted that whenever any one species dominates an environment it collapses.
What we have is a shortage of compassion for all others.
This will not end well.

bill taylor

over population is a major problem. the earth cannot sustain an ever expanding(6.8 billion) number of people. the need for food, water & other resources will cause an eventual collapse.

four truth

Thanks for this article. You are spot on with the comment from James! Glad to see that there are people that get it. End Times birth pains!

Missey

Seems like Michelle OBAMA is
getting her “..fill..” of all
the good food before anyone
else can eat it!

I’d like to point out that food prices are being manipulated in the same way as oil/gas and metals prices. To the Wall Street crooks, everything is for their manipulation.
The inflation of our currency is certainly adding to the problems.
Add to that a few bad harvests, and yeah, prices are definitely going to spike.

Peak oil? Maybe in most of the world’s fields, but not in Alaska or the other ones they’ve been sitting on in central Texas or elsewhere in the US.
You will notice that the world population has spiked with the introduction of oil/gas powered engines. A chunk of the population will fall off with the lack of heating, and the greater expense of growing and shipping of farm products. Time to step away from the grocery chains and buy local.

Alan

Why doesn’t anyone point out the names of the global elite?

REB

Its not so much the lack of these things as it is the control of these things. Food oil and now water are traded as commodities,this tends to create shortages where none exist,and it concentrates power into a few hands like OPEC,Monsanto,and Nestle’respectivly….this leads to people having a lack of basics and to poverty,govts and groups with agendas are responsible for almost all the horror that is befallen on mankind!

Kevin

REB

You are 100% correct.

I recently read a book about the economic collapse that happened in Argentina in 2001.

Argentina produced enough food to feed a population of 300 million and while Argentinas population was 44 million there were shortages. Because the Argentine currency had too little value post collapse the food was exported out of the country for sale.

Hay, globalism is good for you. People touting such nonsense took a page from Josef Gobeles playbook, “If you repeat a lie loudly enough and often enough it becomes the truth in peoples minds”.

Bill K

The world economic system is not controlled by the “elite” it is driven by us. We are the ones who buy what is sold. As far as the underdeveloped nations they do suffer but in many cases at their own hands and through their own ignorance. Many countries do not have the resources or the ability to support the population. It is that simple. Consider Somalia. They have no natural resources (0). If you look at Middle East foreign interests went in and created the oil industry there. They have employed people from the region and they built the infrastructure. If they had no oil most of these countries would be what they are, deserts with no natural resources and little water. Now consider the countries that have resources other than oil. They have other industries and many of them have gone on for centuries. Why is it that you blame corporations for their plight? Are they buying the products? Would they buy them? We are buying them. We therefore should be the ones to blame except if we did not buy them then we lose. Nothing the corporations do if they stopped would benefit those countries. In fact they would suffer. Finally if people are exploited in other countries then that is another issue altogether. Do corporations then become the police of the world? Is there no sovereignty? If you believe in the process we went through as a nation then they will also grow up. It seems interfering with that process has only led to establishing despotism. Obviously the method required to digging oneself out of poverty is work and that is straight up from scripture. Giving people things has proven unsuccessful. Enabling them to better themselves has been proven the only way to success.

So lets stop blaming the other guy. We are all part of the problem and part of the solution… and no we are not running out of food…please!

Gordon

On the subject of ‘Where will our food come from?’ I’ll keep it simple. When we look at just two countries – the USA and the UK, we discover that enough food is thrown away every day to feed a high percentage of those who have nothing. ‘Sell-by’ dates and ‘Consume-by’ dates may have protected the health of the well fed, but they have also led to millions of tons of good food being dumped every year. Add to this more millions of tons left on plates at the end of a meal for no other reason than overindulgence, and we become responsible for the deaths of thousands who live on the edge of starvation. But I also remember a time when the UK was covered with farms and almost every field seemed to be farmed for food. Today millions of acres in the UK lie unproductive or producing alternative ‘cash’ crops simply because it is not economical to work them for the benefit of the hungry.There is no need for a shortgage of food anywhere in the world, the problem lies with the will to do something about it.

http://nonaeroterraqueous.wordpress.com M. Patterson

That’s an interesting blog. It gets some things right and some things wrong, though. The most glaring error was its statement on water-fuelled automobiles. Those are just a clever sham. It takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen releases in the automobile. Ultimately, the energy must originate from somewhere else. As a rule of thumb, every technology that is useful will be used, even if it’s evil, and even if only a few people can use it.

As far as the assessment on the prevalence of polluted water, the rising cost of food, and the peak output of crude oil, all of these statistics may be correct, though it’s hard to pinpoint the crude oil issue, because new sources are still being discovered. A small minority may also possess the vast majority of wealth. However, a common mistake is to assume that the poor are poor because the rich are rich. The truth of the matter is that it takes money to make money, meaning that one must have capital to start a business and create jobs. The rich get richer, but the poor don’t get poorer because of it. If we lost the rich, then I know the poor would be much worse off as a result.

What bothers me more than any of the issues raised here is the post, itself. There’s been a rising incidence of class envy lately, and this, alone, could bring us quite a bit more pain and suffering than that which it seeks to alleviate. Covetousness is still a sin, whether the rich man has ten times more than I do, or a million times more. If the majority rises up to rob the rich minority, then we really are going to see the end of civilization as we know it. Even blogs about conspiracy theories can, themselves, be dangerous conspiracies.

Have a nice day

http://www.greenloop360.blogspot.com/ Steve

VERY Well written and informative. I agree with this 100%

angela

@Gordon, you are so right, I live in the south of Italy and find that the fields are not worked like they used to be, because this generation refuses to do things as their forefathers, so whose fault is it??? I am an american, living here 13yrs now and have chosen, repeat, have chosen to learn how to cook the old fashioned way, on an open fire, tastes better. Point is, that if we return to our roots no one will go hungry. A little flour, H2O and salt makes something edible. Add some beans cooked slowly over an open flame with a clove of garlic, a bay leaf and a tomato will give you a meal. Simple things rather than a prepared box filled with ************ what type of chemicals. If I can do it anyone can!!!

http://www.foodshortagesolutions.com Solution From Science

Thank you so much for sharing it.
Food Shortage is a very big problem in incomings days. The world is standing on the brink of an unprecedented global food shortage. These severe shortages are being created by new weather patterns bombarding our planet. Crops are failing due to flooding or drought brought on by this catastrophic weather.

Mike

I own a farm in Ireland if the red tape nonsense from Europe was lifted I could produce 10 times the amount of food that my farm produces right now. This is only one farm use the same with more farms and you will never see a food shortage.

harpat

The prophets of doom and Paul Ehrlich have not failed. Those who say so have not been to India and lived for 2 days under the conditions hundreds of millions of impoverished and destitute live who are better off dead than alive. Use of toxic chemicals in agriculture has temporarily extended the hellish life at the cost of health which never was there in the first place and even that is marking time.

Paul Cross

I took out the low flow restrictor out of my shower head and now the water comes out so fast that it makes a whistling noise. I wonder how much water it is using. LOL